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Citadel to be Delisted From NYSE

The New York Stock Exchange on Thursday (Feb. 26) rejected Citadel Broadcasting’s business plan to avoid delisting and has pushed the Las Vegas-based radio giant off the trading exchange, effective March 6.

While the company’s shares traded as “CDL,” the company hopes to begin trading the same day on the Over The Counter (OTC) using a new symbol yet to be determined.

Citadel, which gained a penny to close at 14 cents a share on Thursday, fell below a $1 a share months ago, below the exchange’s continued listing standard.

Citadel shares hit a 52-week low of 11 cents a share on Feb. 17 and a 52-week high of $2 on March 11, 2008. The issue has lost more than 36 percent of its value in the past month and 99.26 percent over the last five years.

In June 2006, Citadel, then a company focused on small- and medium-market radio stations, gobbled up a much larger fish, ABC Radio, for a little bit more than $2 billion. But the little fish immediately choked, and share value in Citadel has been evaporating steadily. At the same time, the ABC stations, mostly much sought-after beachfront properties that included WABC-AM/New York, KABC-AM/Los Angeles, KGO-AM/San Francisco, WLS-AM/Chicago and WMAL-AM/Washington, began losing steam in both ratings and revenues, helping to escalate the decline of the company’s value.

Citadel remains the largest pure-play U.S. radio company, with 165 FM stations and 58 AM stations in more than 50 of the nation’s top markets. Its ABC Radio Networks creates and distributes programming to more than 4,000 affiliates, and syndicates programming such “Paul Harvey News and Commentary.”